dipper@utastro.UUCP (Debbie Byrd) (11/06/86)
We'll talk about the constellation Auriga the charioteer -- when we come back. November 6 The Charioteer The constellation Auriga can now be found in the northeast each evening. As night progresses, it passes nearly overhead. Auriga is fairly easy to pick out, even from medium-sized cities. Its stars make the shape of a pentagon -- and it has a bright star, called Capella. The constellation Auriga represents a charioteer. It's one of the oldest constellations -- associated with a mythical early king of Athens -- who was lame -- and who was said to have invented the chariot as a means of transportation. And yet there's nothing about Auriga that resembles a chariot or a man. This constellation is one of those that looks simply like a geometric pattern in the sky. The stars of Auriga are pictured on old stars maps of the Babylonians, Greeks, Arabs and even Chinese. They usually show the charioteer holding reins and a whip in one hand -- and a she-goat with its two kids in the other. The brightest star in Auriga, Capella, is sometimes called the Goat Star. Three nearby stars -- Eta, Epsilon and Zeta -- form a small triangle near Capella -- an asterism sometimes called the Kids. Auriga lies across the centerline of the hazy starlit trail of the Milky Way -- and that makes it a rewarding constellation to scan with ordinary binoculars. If you've got a dark country sky, you won't have any trouble seeing some star clusters in this constellation -- which'll look through your binoculars like hazy patches -- in which some stars are visible. So that's Auriga -- the charioteer -- a five-sided figure visible now each evening high in the northeastern sky. Script by Deborah Byrd. (c) Copyright 1985, 1986 McDonald Observatory, University of Texas at Austin